Lego is a range of construction toys first created by Ole Kirk Christiansen in the 1940s in Denmark. Beginning as a set of stackable, interlocking blocks, Lego has evolved into the company’s global flagship product of colorful plastic pieces that can be assembled and re-assembled in infinite ways. The blocks are so popular with children that LEGO has designed educational products and curricula, and teachers are using them in their classrooms.

This is a bright and colorful design, just like LEGOs themselves. Easy to follow the information down the page, but uses too much text in my opinion.

The second section, Statistics, should have used some data visualizations to show the numbers visually. I think they missed an opportunity here to use Legos themselves to visualize the numbers. Hidden in here is the idea that LEGO should be considered the World’s Largest Producer of Tires (which I find astonishing), and a quick visual looking at the world's tire companies would have been great!

The bottom does a good job listing the data sources and the producing company logo, but is missing a URL to the original infographic posting and some type of copyright statement.

You can read more about the development of the infographic on Silicon Angle

This design does a really good job with the visual basics. Showing the icons/logos of the startup companies, illustrating the business types, mapping the conference registrants. The overall design tells a good story top-to-bottom to the readers, and it’s easy to follow the flow of information.

Three things stood out to me that could be improved:

There are a lot of data values in the text of the timeline that should have been visualized.

The three shapes showing the amount of Interactive Conference Participants, Conference Sessions and Interactive Media in Attendance all of different values, but the shapes are not sized to match those values.

The last section “The Accelerator” seems to fall apart as all text, even though there are some good data values there that should have been visualized.

A flowing history of more than 100 automobile companies across the complete time span of the automobile industry. From 1900 to 1925 over 3,300 organizations were formed to produce automobiles in the United States. In 1910 alone 400 new startups entered the industry. Most attempts lasted less than two years. While car sales exploded (from 1910 to 2010 US sales rose from 200,000 to 11.5 million cars) the strongest entrepreneurs bought out rivals and combined forces. Today, ten companies account for about 90% of all US automobile sales.

This graphic uncovers and explains how the industry was created and how it arrived at its present form. At the core is a full genealogy of over 100 companies from the Big Five to the small defunct companies. Folded into the genealogy is the relative market share of US sales for each company.

The Big Five car companies have unique colors, and all of the other companies are color-coded into categories of he trest of the Top 20, defunct companies and other interesting or famous companies. The thickness of the lines change over time to represent market share.

I really like this data visualization from Nathan Yau at FlowingData.com. Vehicles Involved in Fatal Crashes 2010 takes a new look at the statistics released by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Instead of plotting them on a traditional map, Nathan looked at the time data.

After seeing this map on The Guardian, I was curious about what other data was available from the National Highway Traffic Safety Association. It turns out there’s a lot and it’s relatively easy to access via FTP. What’s most surprising is that it’s detailed and fairly complete, with columns for weather, number of people involved, date and time of accidents, and a lot more.

The above shows vehicles involved in fatal crashes in 2010 (which is different from number of crashes or number of fatalities). This data was just released last month, at the end of 2011 oddly enough. It’s a calendar view with months stacked on top of one another and darker days indicate more vehicles involved.

- Nathan Yau

As was suggested by others in the comments on FlowingData, I agree that since the weekends have the higher incidence rate, starting the week with Monday and moving Sunday to the last column may show that a little bit clearer.

Nathan has made all of the data avaialble for anyone that would like to try a visualization themselves. Student project?

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is this week in Las Vegas, NV (Jan 10-13). Sortable.com has released this cool infographic, “Everything You Need To Know About CES” showing the history of the events, and some of the stats behind putting the show on every year.

The International Consumer Electronics Show is the biggest tech event of the year, with an expected 140,000+ visitors and 2,700 exhibitors who are planning more than 20,000 product announcements over a 4 day period. Sortable.com wanted to take a look at the history of CES and just how big the show really is.

I really love how the timeline shows the reader images of the actual products that were the key product launches at various times throughout the show’s history.

A few things that make good infographic designs were left out.

The copyright. Is this free to the public to reproduce, edit, publish and use for commercial purposes?

The URL of the infographic’s main landing page. This always makes it easier for readers to find the original.

List the data sources, where did the stats come from? Why should I believe your data?

The staggered timeline is disconcerting to readers. The years should be evenly spaced out along the timeline.

Check out this complete timeline of Doctor Who from 1963 to present, including episodes, seasons, companions, villains, and more. Scroll down to follow all the Doctor’s adventures through time. A Fantastic resource for any Doctor Who fan.

First and formost it’s a timeline of the Doctor Who episodes from 1963-2011. I’ve posted earlier Doctor Who related infograpics here before (The Doctor Who infographic), but none that contained this level of detail. From left-to-right you have seasons, episodes, which Doctor, which companions, key villains and additional facts. When you view the timeline on the original page, the episode titles are also listed on the left side and aligned with the infographic.

There are a couple design changes I would propose that would have made the data easier to understand. One of the things I love is that there is no legend, or any need for one. All of the descriptions for the color-coding and data visualizations is included in the visual designs. However, some of the color-coding is inconsistent. The color for Rose Tyler as the first of the modern companions is green in the timeline, but then additional facts about Rose are colored blue in the last column. This is also true about the character of the The Master, and other companions, where a consistent color-coding would have made the connections easier for the reader to understand.

November 18, 2011 marks the Minecraft release out of beta. Follow the rise of Minecraft, from it’s humble beginnings as a one-man experimental project to its overwhelming success in the gaming industry accruing over $1 million in weekly sales. With close to $0 spent on advertising, Minecraft’s popularity can be marked by this year’s sold-out MineCon event in Las Vegas, NV, on November 18 & 19.

The history of the Christmas tree has garnered a lot of fascinating points over the years. A tradition with humble beginnings in 15th century Latvia, the festive tower of foliage has grown to be one of the holiday season’s most beloved symbols. From the first decorated tree in 1600 to Gubbio, Italy’s 650-meter tall wonder, get a glimpse of Christmas tree history through this handy visual guide from Christmas Tree Market.

This one was a lot of fun, and of course is timed to be appropriate for the holidays. I love how this design turned out, and it was a unique topic that had not received a thorough infographic treatment before. The design challenge was letting the images shine, keeping the text to a minimum, but still providing the reader with a lot of interesting information.

No matter which side of the Live Tree vs. Artificial Tree debate you fall on, you’ll find lots of good information in the infographic. I bet you’ll even learn something you didn’t know. I’m still fascinated by the upside-down Christmas Tree!

They say that money makes the world go round. While that might just be true today, centuries ago, spices made the world go round. Spices used to be worth so much that people set about to conquer new territories in search for these flavor enhancers. Today, basic spices may not fetch so much in the market (although saffron will still cost you an arm and two legs), but they are used just as much in kitchens around the world.

The information in here is fantastic, but a few design problems make this a little harder to understand than it should be. The sized-circles over the map…what do the sizes mean? From an overall design aspect, it’s missing a clear title, license and URL to the original posting.

I can eat jalapeno peppers in a lot of the food here in Texas, but anything over about 6,000 on the Scoville Scale is out of my league!

We all love to be a little scared sometimes, and Halloween is the perfect day for that. We get to enjoy all of the frightening festivities: creepy carnivals, haunted houses, trick or treating and of course, horror film marathons. The Halloween Horror Films infographic takes us back to some of our most feared nightmares. Look at 35 of the most popular cult classics, their rotten tomatoes ratings, the original movie budget and their gross domestic box office revenue. See which movies made the cut to become the Top 15 Highest Ranked Horror Films of All Time.